Believe in Me (Inspirational video for the start of school)

This video, posted to YouTube and created for the Starkville (Mississippi) School District by Broadcast Media Group, is a great video to share with teachers, administrators, students, parents, and other constituents in your educational community as we start the 2009-2010 school year in the United States. In addition to asking, “Do You Believe in Me?” video participants answer the basic and important questions:

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Why did you become a teacher?

Who is your favorite teacher? What is your favorite subject? Why?

Amidst the continuing destructive, myopic focus we see in so many school systems on high stakes accountability and summative, punitive testing of students based on minimum standards, it is refreshing and inspiring to be reminded about things that are MOST important for learning, teaching, and growing.

6 Responses to Believe in Me (Inspirational video for the start of school)

While I love the content, I despise the fact that a school corporation took money out of the education budget to pay for this video, produced by a commercial entity. If they believed in their staff they would have known that someone within the district had the talent to share their story without hiring an outside media company. How much technology could have been placed in the hands of teachers and kids, for what it cost to produce this marketing tool for the district?

I certainly agree we need to empower students and teachers to be digital storytellers and create videos like this, but the reality is that many schools spend funds for good reasons on public relations campaigns as well as personnel. I do not know how much this video cost the Starkville school district, but it appears to be money well spent from my vantage point. The video had about 300 views when I posted this yesterday, it’s over 1200 now. The high quality of the video and the fact that it IS officially endorsed by the school district may open some eyes of administrators and board members who have previously thought YouTube didn’t have any valuable content for learning.

Suffice it to say that this project would have cost over $20,000 if someone walked in off the street and wanted to do it. We did it for far, far less because of our belief in our local schools. (You might have been able to get a few iMacs for what we did this project for.) And yes, my two sons are in the video.

The technology, and expertise, that this project required surpasses what most districts have available. That’s why we do what we do.

And the PR alone has been more than worth it. We have attempted to break through that national stereotypes about Mississippi with this piece.